@Randal'Thor And anytime that I bring up Hemingway, nobody is really interested. I just don't know a lot of other authors that well. I know a little bit about Bram Stoker and Mary Shelley, but it just doesn't appear that they are the types of authors that people want to discuss in there. I tried bringing up Philippa Gregory once and just got crickets ;). It's not a big deal, it's just that I don't have anything else to contribute to chat over there.

I am attempting to start an on-topic chat in here at the urging of Rand... ;)

@Hamlet Well, no. We were just discussing how this room likes to stay on-topic.

I was just telling Rand that that's why I don't come around here anymore, because I really don't have a lot of stuff to contribute. I am always in The Screening room or Mos Eisley just because it's idle chatter and we pretty much just talk about whatever.

@Hamlet Hmmmm...I don't really know who to promote it to. My sister is a teacher and an avid Poe fan. I got her to answer one of Rand's questions over here not too long ago. SE is just not really her thing and she doesn't have a lot of time to devote to it.

Re: chat topicality. Over on RPG General Chat, it works pretty well to be able to talk about just about anything so long as we're Being Nice, but to have a side chat which serves as a pressure valve based on two guidelines:

> - If somebody wants to talk about RPGs, then any non-RPG discussion moves to the side chat. - If anyone calls for a discussion to move to the side chat for any reason, it moves with no questions asked and no need to justify the request.

In rare cases where recurring patterns have been identified, a small handful of topics may get moved to the side chat preemptively.

This lets us be free-ranging without talking over the top of each other, losing the chat's primary focus, or creating topical cul-de-sac chats which inevitably wither and die.

I have an ID question about a particular short story I heard on the radio. I remember the whole plot of the story and a lot of verbatim quotes from it. I also think I remember the title of the story, and if I'm right, then I've found a reference to it and its author online. But I'm not 100% certa...

@Librarian Share things on any social media you have followers on that might be interested. Find established groups that might have an interest (Reddit, other forums or communities), share content there. Unfortunately there isn't a real magic bullet for this stuff. And sometimes it takes a long time to start getting Google traffic for this stuff.

Especially for things like this, where they're not the sorts of things people necessarily will be googling for every day

@Mithrandir let me know if I can help with that or when you create it, and I will totally see if I can get any of the author types I follow to peek at it. Mind you it's a lot of romance stuff so I don't know how successful I'd be, but it would be fun to follow anyhow!

Ah, so you're asking about the non-journalist 20th century writer most famous during the 20th century?

That starts to bring in a lot of extra weird statistical questions like, how do we measure "most famous" over the period of a hundred years? Would a 1990s writer need 9 times as much exposure as a 1910s writer?

@BESW I suspect that level of organisation is only necessary for larger sites/rooms, and Lit doesn't have the necessary volume to merit it yet.

@Mithrandir Yes, because your Fanatic badge counts the number of distinct UTC days you've logged in to the site, while Area 51 counts ... something else. (I'm not going to waste time trying to understand the mechanics of Area 51 - even the devs have given up :-P )

@Ash Re getting Google traffic: I think that will happen sooner or later even if we don't consciously try for it. SE tends to do well on Google in general. Over on Arts & Crafts I recently got the first Famous Question badge for a question which AFAICT hasn't been especially promoted anywhere - it must simply be a question which a lot of people have and have found via web searches.

@Gallifreyan Whether Manhattan isn't actually a new entity/god/whatever, just a confused human being with more power and knowledge than he knows what to do with

> However, I think it's possible that Manhattan is simply a confused human being with more knowledge and power than he really knows what to do with. I think he's really Jon Osterman underneath his blue skin, but I'm not sure if he thinks that anymore.

And your answer:

> But firstly, he does not see himself as Jon Osterman anymore. Remember the line from Watchmen #12 (emphasis respected):

It didn't kill Osterman... Did you think it would kill me?

> I am not Jon, but Jon became me. His perspective informed me, his perspective--

In Watchmen, towards the end, Dr. Manhattan talks about his joy of being blind to time because of the tachyon emissions, and how exciting it is for him because he had forgotten the joy of not knowing something.
But, we also know that he already knows everything that he will say and do, what will...

The original Nite Owl's feelings about Dr. Manhattan are complicated.
Firstly, Nite Owl acknowledges Dr. Manhattan's and Watchmen's superiority when it comes to fighting crime. This is seen in the prequel comic series, Before Watchmen: Minutemen (which is narrated by Hollis Mason), issue 6:
...

It's hard to find stuff for Watchmen answers, since it's all philosophical and stuff, and I can't keep in mind which series I saw a particular scene in. For 3 hours I thought that retirement dinner scene was in one of the Before Watchmen series; and it was, partly, but not this panel with the talk about electric cars, and not being able to find it drove me crazy, combined with the perspective of having to go through all 12 or so issues of Watchmen to find it.

@Shokhet Unless you're really interested, there's no need to read it at all. Some of them conflict with Moore's series, and not all contribute significant details to the plot.

Manhattan's story is important, as it is the only one that is not an "origin story" - since we already know his origin from Moore's run. Almost all the others are origin and character development stories (Nite Owl II, Rorschach, Silk Spectre II, Ozymandias, Dollar Bill, even Moloch). Comedian's story is different because it seems to conflict with Moore's canon directly. Minutemen can be read as an origin story as well, but it also has a historical satire tinge to it.

Not saying they're bad though, they explore respective characters in great detail, and I must say - with appropriate style. Rorschach and Comedian were written by Brian Azzarello, who also wrote Joker - which was good.

Sites which cover many books
Project Gutenberg. An excellent resource containing thousands of texts in electronic versions with easily copy-pastable text. They also care about legality:
Our ebooks may be freely used in the United States because most are not protected by U.S. copyright law, ...

@Shokhet Not really - at least Manhattan's solo series does not openly contradict anything from the original series. One could argue that it does, but that deserves a separate question. Mostly, it was because some people are against the prequels (hm, where have I seen that before?) because Moore disapproved of them.

@Shokhet I didn't actually read past first two issues of Comedian though (I don't really like him), so can't offer an opinion on whether it was good/bad/contributional.

The second volume of The Sandman tells the story of Rose Walker and her relationship with Dream as the vortex of the modern era.
While I was reading the volume, I was initially confused about how the prologue (#9 "Tales in the Sand") and Part Four (#13 "Men of Good Fortune") related to the narr...

@Shokhet By the way, a possible trivial answer to your question: Dream and Hob agreed to meet once a hundred years. Could it be that the exact date happened to be during the main events of Doll's House? It's not that Morpheus had much to do during that time.

@Gallifreyan I think the comics were supposed to be published in the years that they happened, and I think that Dream and Hob met every century on the '89s. The year is definitely mentioned for "Men of Good Fortune," I'm not sure that it is for the other story(ies) in that volume

Do you mean to ask about free resources? I infer from the sites you included in your answer that you were, but I don't see the word "free" in your question (unless I just missed it). Would amazon.com work in an answer? That site satisfies "good," "legal," and "online." — ShokhetMar 31 at 2:14

@Shokhet (Sorry, I must have missed your comment at first.) I think I'd like to focus on free resources if possible, since you can get nearly any book reasonably easily if you're willing to pay for it, and I doubt many people will be willing to spend money just to write answers on SE. But if enough people think a non-free section in the CW answer would be useful, then by all means add one. — Rand al'Thor1 min ago

@Shokhet @Randal'Thor So how about Humble Bundle? It's books for ridiculously low prices, plus charity, plus people may read them and ask questions, instead of writing answers. It's also possibly to procure books to write answers, since they have thematic or author-based sells from time to time (right now it's Bandon Sanderson).

Asbjørnsen og Moe are the Norwegian answers to the Brothers Grimm, the collectors of what is still considered the definitive volume of Norwegian folk tales.
How many of these tales were taken from stories which already existed in written form, and were any of them the first written versions of s...